ThinkGeoEnergy – Geothermal Energy News

Enel Green Power to share experience on hybrid solar-geothermal plant

Enel Green Power, NREL, INL and the GTO will cooperate in a new renewable solar-geothermal hybrid plant that will be paired with the Stillwater Plant in Nevada.

Enel Green Power (EGP), the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Idaho National Laboratory (INL), under the oversight of the U.S. Department of Energy Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO) have signed a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) with the goal of exploring the potential of EGP’s innovative Stillwater hybrid power plant.

The 2 MW Stillwater Concentrated Solar Power (CSP) Project is currently under construction in Fallon, Nevada and, upon completion, it will operate alongside the existing 33 MW Stillwater geothermal power plant, which is already paired with a 26 MW photovoltaic facility. This is the first hybrid plant in the world able to bring together at the same site the continuous generating capacity of binary-cycle, medium-enthalpy geothermal power with solar photovoltaic and solar thermodynamic.

Under the agreement, the integration of geothermal and CSP to generate power will be studied over the coming year. EGP, NREL, INL and the GTO will work together to model the combination of geothermal and CSP systems, validating simulated results with real-world data from the Stillwater facility. The fruits of this work will be used to explore and quantify the potential benefits of different operating strategies and integration schemes, with the goal of opening doors for the development of future hybrid renewable energy facilities.

Construction at the Stillwater CSP plant began in April 2014, and is expected to be completed within the third quarter of this year. The concentrating solar panels field extends over 21 acres of property, just adjacent to the geothermal and photovoltaic plants.

“The CSP addition at Stillwater represents an exciting leap forward for renewables” stated Francesco Venturini, Enel Green Power CEO “This project is an important example of how our team in cooperation with outstanding partners, such as NREL and INL, can develop and deploy innovative projects, whose advanced solutions will have far-reaching applications for our portfolio and for the whole renewable energy industry.”

Innovation is a key component of EGP growth strategy and it is focused on enhancing plant performance, employing new technologies, as well as integrating renewable energy in human settlements.

Source: Press Release from Enel Green Power Website

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